A couple book reviews, just to compare
Sidebar: I’d like to welcome our new CraveBooks subscribers to Substack. Glad to have you on board. You should have received my initial welcome letter. But to bring you up to speed, for the past several months since I launched my novel RUNNING AS FAST AS I CAN, I have been sharing select scenes with my readers. Thus far, we have followed Daniel from his home in the steel mill slum town of Clairton in 1960 through his college days in Kentucky. When we last saw Daniel, he was caught up in an anti-Vietnam war protest at Kent State, where he was nearly killed.
Now to all my readers, I thought this was a good place to stop and catch our breath with a sidebar discussion about two books I recently read. The one is Prophet Song by Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch. The other is Cassidy Hutchinson’s Trump White House memoir Enough. Both are best sellers about authoritarian cultures, but they are entirely different in every way.
Synopsis: On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.
Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind?
Prophet Song presents a terrifying and shocking vision of a country sliding into authoritarianism and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.
It is important to know that I am not a book critic. I am a book reader. I know what I like, what pulls me in, and what makes me turn one more page. To be candid, I find most critically acclaimed books aren’t that much fun to read. And that was the case with Prophet Song.
First, there was limited setting or character description, making me struggle from the outset to know where it was happening, when it was happening, and especially who it was happening to.
Second, and more important, Lynch uses very few paragraph breaks, limited dialogue, with no dialogue designations. In other words, his story is a series very long ‘telling’ paragraphs that made it hard for me to follow. Granted, that did produce a dark mood, which I am sure was his intent, but it made actually reading the story unnecessarily difficult. I had to force myself to keep reading. It reminded me of many of the academic books I read in graduate school. You know, those books your professor said you had to read if you wanted to be well-versed in your field. I called them “lip-moving books,” because that’s what I had to do to stay awake. Was their content important? Probably, but there’s no reason they have to be so difficult to read. And that’s why I did what too many of us do when reading becomes work. I quit reading it.
Synopsis: Cassidy Hutchinson’s desk was mere steps from the most controversial president in recent American history. Now, she provides a riveting account of her extraordinary experiences as an idealistic young woman thrust into the middle of a national crisis, where she risked everything to tell the truth about some of the most powerful people in Washington.
On January 6th, 2021, when, at twenty-four, Hutchinson was faced with a choice between loyalty to the Trump administration or loyalty to the country by revealing what she saw and heard in the attempt to overthrow a democratic election. She bravely came forward to become the pivotal witness in the House January 6 investigations, as her testimony transfixed and stunned the nation. In her memoir, Hutchinson reveals the struggle between the pressures she confronted to toe the party line and the demands of the oath she swore to defend American democracy.
Enough reaches far beyond the typical insider political account. This is a portrait of how the courage of one person can change the course of history.
Hutchinson’s memoir is what we call “a primary source.” That means it is a first-hand account of an event. Raw information from someone who actually experienced an event. That alone makes it important. Think of it like a witness’s testimony in court. A recitation of the facts. There’s no description of the setting, or the characters. No audience connection with the people and places in the story. Rather, it’s a linear journey through one event after another as we follow Ms. Hutchinson through her interactions in the Trump White House as it descends into the chaos leading up to the January 6th insurrection.
It was nearly impossible to keep track of the vast array of characters, most of whom she refers to by their first names only. Although that did create some confusion for the reader, the story, although familiar to all of us, was now so personal, that we readily overlooked any shortcomings in her narrative.
In the end, I found myself, not only rooting for her, but genuinely relieved when she made her decision to go public with her testimony.
Was it a great book? Not at all—if all we are measuring is it’s literary content. But it was a great story that had me turning one page after the other. And in the end, isn’t that what a writer wants to do?
Now regarding my book, I think Lorraine Cobcroft, in her Readers’ Favorite review, said it best.
RUNNING AS FAST AS I CAN is a genuine page-turner. A good writer makes you either laugh or cry. John David Graham did both. Daniel’s story had me struggling at times to read through my tears. Graham is a truly great author, in my view, because long after putting the book aside, the characters still live with you. Graham takes you into their world to walk in their shoes, to feel what they feel, to think what they think, and to know what they know. You learn with them. You love with them. You cry with them. And in the end, you draw on the experiences you share with them to shape your view of the world.
This book shines a light in dark corners. The author does not hold back in his judgment of human behavior and a society shaped by prejudices. But he reminds us that life is written in pencil so that we can erase a mistake and start over. As we join Daniel on his journey, I suspect most of us will reflect on the times we needed to erase a chapter and rewrite it. We ponder the race we are running; our own search for love, for a place to belong in the world, and for a way to light the path for those who struggle in a dark place. Running As Fast As I Can is told with deep compassion and understanding. It’s a story of love and forgiveness. Intensely emotional, it is also timely and relevant, highlighting social issues our society still struggles with today. It is, in my opinion, truly a masterpiece.
RUNNING AS FAST AS I CAN vividly portrays a traumatic period in our history, while grappling with intense emotional and social issues we still face today. It is an epic journey for love and forgiveness. Most important, it is a page-turner story that readers will identify with because it is, on some level, everyone’s story.
Am I saying my novel is better written that Prophet Song, or more important than Enough? Not at all. In the end, the worth of a story is subjective, dependent totally on the reader. But what both Ms. Cobcroft and I are saying is RUNNING AS FAST AS I CAN conveys important personal and intensely emotional issues in a manner that makes reading it enjoyable. In other words, you won’t have to move your lips to stay awake.
By the way, RUNNING AS FAST AS I CAN is now available on Kindle Unlimited.
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“A good writer makes you either laugh or cry. John David Graham did both. Daniel’s story had me struggling at times to read through my tears. Truly a Masterpiece"
Readers’ Favorite 5 Star Review